John Paasonen is CEO and founder of Maxwell, a modern
mortgage platform to empower loan officers to be more
productive, connected and successful by intelligently automating their workflow with homebuyers and Realtors. Most
recently, Paasonen led strategy for PayPal’s North America
payments and global credit businesses, culminating a

15-year career in consumer credit and financial services.

He holds a Master of Business Administration from Duke
University. Reach Paasonen at john@himaxwell.com.

To fuel growth and market advantage, you need the right people onboard at your com- pany. In many ways, this has become one of the key dimensions of competition in the
mortgage industry today.

The Stratmor Group recently reported that annual
turnover among residential mortgage originators
approaches 30 percent. That means for every 10 people
you hire, three will be gone within a year, taking their
training, knowledge and contacts with them.

Skill shortages in the labor force will continue to
worsen with baby boomers retiring at a rate of 10,000

per day, and millennials taking their place. These young
workers, including originators, not only lack experience, they also lack a loyal network of referral partners.

Tackling the skills shortage

Branch, regional and organizational leaders in themortgage industry must implement effective strate-gies to attract, engage and retain star performers, whilealso nurturing younger team members to help themsucceed. One approach to addressing this challengeis to look to the strategies that are being employedin other industries that face a similar heated com-petition for talent.

The challenges of finding qualified professionals are all too familiar to technology companies, for
example. A shortage of qualified software developers,
machine-learning experts and systems architects has
driven up costs and turnover in the tech industry.

You don’t have to look further than the Silicon Valley
campuses to see how the industry has applied innovation to its talent strategies to accelerate business
growth. Perhaps there is something the mortgage
industry can learn from the technology industry, which
has long experience engaging in the war for talent.

Cultivate belonging

There is no shortage of articles and books promoting the value of creating a culture that attracts